


Perfect Blue Buildings

by DarkAthena (seraphim_grace)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Conspiracy Theories, Government Conspiracy, Government Experimentation, Human Experimentation, Multi, Past Child Abuse, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2017-12-30 03:16:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1013440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphim_grace/pseuds/DarkAthena
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's just a child, Chris thinks, about the same age as his own daughter, in an oversized leather jacket with a cropped tee under it. She's wearing daisy dukes and hi tops, her hair loose over her shoulder and she wears her make up like armour. Beside her the boy is agitated, drumming his fingers on the table. Like her he is dressed in thrift store white trash, battered knock off vans, a denim jacket that doesn't quite fit, with ragged cuffs and missing buttons, jeans that are at least a size too large, and a "wonderbread" tee where the neck is torn to reveal a splatter of moles. He has eyes that are a shade darker than those of a wolf.</p><p>Author notes at the end to avoid spoilers. However if you are triggered or uncomfortable with any of the tagged topics, this might not be the fic for you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

  
_“The first horror is there's horror. The second is you accommodate it.”_  
― [Glen Duncan](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/37613.Glen_Duncan), _[The Last Werewolf](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/14418429) _

 

 

She's just a child, Chris thinks, about the same age as his own daughter, in an oversized leather jacket with a cropped tee under it. She's wearing daisy dukes and hi tops, her hair loose over her shoulder and she wears her make up like armour. Beside her the boy is agitated, drumming his fingers on the table. Like her he is dressed in thrift store white trash, battered knock off vans, a denim jacket that doesn't quite fit, with ragged cuffs and missing buttons, jeans that are at least a size too large, and a "wonderbread" tee where the neck is torn to reveal a splatter of moles and a yellowing bruise on his collar bone. He has eyes that are a shade darker than those of a wolf.

 

Chris has never seen two children look so cold before, and he can't think of them as anything but children, for all that they are the ones who have arranged this meeting. It is only when the boy moves that he sees the pin in his jacket, like a trophy, a silver wolf rampant, a gift that Chris had given his father when he had been their age. They're about the same age as his daughter but Allison's eyes are bright with laughter and these two are dull with time.

 

He knows that they are dangerous, but he can't seem to make the leap in his own head, as the boy plays with his spoon, drumming it on the edge of his empty banana split bowl, and the girl turns the coffee again and again in her hands.

 

He knows better than to underestimate them, but they are unarmed, children, he thinks, for all the ink that he can see sprawled across her abdomen, a wolf, no, he corrects himself seeing it as she leans forward, her tee cut away to reveal it, the God-wolf of ancient Japan, the white wolf with her flaming shield, curls from under her arm to the line of her hip, before burying it's head in the waistband of her daisy dukes.

 

She wears her affiliation proudly, even as she turns the cheap cup in her hands, the black coffee forming an inky spill inside, catching the light and rippling, and her bitten nails, painted blue and chipped, bring him back again and again to her youth. When she turns the cup he sees the Greek letter tattooed on her wrist. Theta.

 

"The one thing everyone agrees on, Argent," she says and her voice sounds old and tired, "is that you're not like your father, that you are a good man."

 

Chris has heard the rumours about his father, rumours of how he twisted the code, but his father has been missing for over a year, and the boy sitting opposite him is wearing his pin like a badge of honour. The girl is wearing dog tags; they are clawed in half. He wonders which hunter lost them that she can wear them so casually.

 

She reaches into her shirt and from her bra she pulls a data stick which she slides across the table. "Your code," the boy says and his voice is young too, but sad and tired, he wonders what horrors happened to these children, "it says we hunt those who hunt others, isn't that right?" His lips are chapped and there are marks on them from his teeth, where he has bitten down on them one too many times. "Does that include children?"

 

"No." Chris answers.

 

The girl moves her head. "What about the parents of those children?" she asks, "the ones you say you don't take."

 

"I don't understand," Chris answers, wondering how these two children got so jaded and bitter, and why this girl wears trophies and the god wolf on her skin with such pride.

 

The boy laughs and the girl's smile is fond to him. "Check the files, Argent." She says, "and meet us here tomorrow, we'll leave our wolves at home." The boy stands up and offers the girl his hand to leave, she throws a few crumpled bills on the table to cover their bill but Chris, wriggling out of the booth hands them back to her.

 

"Till tomorrow." He can't get the image of Allison out of his head, she starts training next year, trained to be a general, but he wonders if her eyes will be as said as these children, because as hardened as hunting has made them he wants nothing more than to bring them home, to give them something other than being jaded and haunted.

 

\---

 

When Chris meets them the next day it is clear that he did not sleep. She has switched out her daisy duke's for white jeans so tight they look painted on, shredded as if by claws, and a sloppy sweater, and her hair is pulled back, but she still wears the dog tags proudly, and a dark red lipstick the colour of blood. The boy is wearing another skinny tee and oversized jeans. Where she is small and distinct he is tall and still growing into his limbs, his hair is dark where her's is red. Chris gets the impression she is the one guarding him.

 

He's not nearly stupid enough to think that they are alone in here, their wolves are here somewhere. Chris doesn't know what they look like, but they're certainly in the diner. He wouldn't leave them behind either. Not if a fraction of what she gave him to read is true.

 

There are empty plates in front of them, her nails are green today, but just as chipped. There is a bruise on his collarbone that vanishes under the wrecked neck of his tee shirt. They're younger than his Allison, Chris knows that now. He also knows that they haven't been children in a very long time.

 

The boy, Epsilon, he is called in the files, is fussing with food, there is a plate of burger and fries in front of him, but he doesn't seem to know what to do with the ketchup, Chris wonders how he'd react if he reached across and stole a fry from his plate, dunking it in the sauce to show him how. He'd probably get his throat torn out for the presumption.

 

"You read it." The girl, Theta, asks him. She was six when the Institute took her, that's what it says in the notes, murdering her parents so that no one would report her missing. Now she's barely sixteen. The boy is four months older and was in the Program longer. If the files are true they are the only two survivors of the hundred fifty or so children snatched for the Program. Something like a thousand wolves went in and two came out. These two children, and he hates that it's the only word he has for them, were able to get out and bring their wolves with them.

 

The files called them Handlers, children that were taken to be indoctrinated, to bind the wolves to them so that they could be used, although the files never said what that purpose was. Chris has the location of what remains of the Institute, but he heard about the freak gas explosion weeks before.

 

There were something like thirty years of files of which she gave him only a taste. He has no idea of the horrors they've seen.

 

"I read it. I don't know what you want from me?"

 

The boy rolls his eyes, his mouth is expressive. "We want," he says bluntly, "to know that your sister is dead." He says it bluntly, "that the avenues that she exploited with your father are shut down, we want nothing like this to fucking happen again." Epsilon, Chris thinks, the fifth letter. His hands are long and thin, already a man's hands. "we want to know that we can go somewhere and be fucking safe, that we're not going to get hunted like dogs. We want to know that the rumours are true and you are a good man because all our lives we were told if we could get to a place we would be safe."

 

Under her breath the girl, Theta, murmurs "Midian."

 

"That turned out to not exist, we were given just enough hope to hang us with, and all we want is somewhere safe."

 

"What happened to the Institute?" Chris asks, the files ended before he could learn that.

 

Theta cocks her lovely head, her name, her real name was not in the files. She was always referred to as Theta. "They underestimated us." She says. "They made a mistake, they trained us for war and we brought it to them." She sounds a little smug. He wonders where she has the knife hidden on her person, he's not naive enough to think she hasn't. Even Allison, sweet innocent Allison carries. In this world you have to.

 

He wants nothing more than to go home, to gather his little girl up in his arms and hold her tight and safe from the world; from the things that they did to these children. And they are children, just ones forced through horrors and into the wide world.

 

"I have sent the order up the chain of command." Chris tells them finally, "Kate and my father broke the code and did so repeatedly, the information you shared cleared up a lot of questions we had. Kate's death sentence has been passed by the Argent Matriarch, she'll be dead by sun down."

 

The girl laughs, a mocking sound. "You are a fool," she says, "if you think it were only the two of them."

 

The boy pushes away his plate. "You may be a good man, but you are a fool. Lydia asked that we at least try," it's the first time Chris has heard the girl's name. Lydia, it's beautiful, like her. She should be in high school worrying about shoes. "I wanted to gut you and leave you in the street as a warning."

 

Chris does not for a second think that the boy is incapable of this, but for some reason they haven't, he doesn't think it's as simple as how he paid for dinner the day before.

 

"Peter wanted to burn you alive like his family was when they took him and his sister and placed them in the Institute, but he's a pet, he won't hurt you if I don't let him." The girl, Theta, Lydia, says, she has the hint of a smile. "But you have nothing to offer us. Can you remove the kill switches?" Chris shakes his head. "Can you stop the hunts?" He shakes his head. "Then you need to clean house." Her tone is even. "If you kill our wolves you kill us, and you don't know how many other wolves and Handlers escaped the Institute, you don't know how many are out there because of what your father and sister did. We are going home, Argent, and if we find you there, or near there, or even suspect you will come, we will unleash hell upon you, and we won't need our wolves to do it."

 

She looks across the diner to where two men are sat, they are both dark haired, and verging towards muscular, both in Walmart chic, with practical work boots, both men turn and look at them. Both have the suggestion of a beard, one working towards a goatee like a silent movie villain, and the other just scruff, both are, now that Chris looks at them, wolves. Both of them flash their eyes, one Alpha Red, the other a distinctive Steel Blue Chris has rarely seen before, only on one wolf who begged and cried and asked them to save her baby. His father had killed the mother then the child. It was the first time Chris ever doubted his father.

 

"Can I ask where home is?" He says. "I can arrange a lift if nothing else."

 

The boy laughs. "No," he says, "We've had enough of your kindnesses to last a lifetime." His tone is bitter, "you weren't there when the orderlies came in the night and there was nothing we could do, you weren't there when they broke our bones to make our wolves shift, you weren't there when our wolves cried the first time they saw the sky, terrified that they would fly away. You weren't there, and we want nothing from you now." He turns ot his companion, "I told you we should have killed him."

 

"We're reformed now, Stiles," she says and pats the boy's hand. "Remember." She's condescending and the boy grins at her. It's a killer's smile. He's seen it before, on hunters just before they had to put them down. He never thought he'd see it on a child.

 

"You're right, Lyds," he says, "it's better like this, it happened on his watch and he's going to have to live with that. We're going home," he repeats it like a mantra, something repeated, "and we're going to be safe there, because otherwise you see that data stick we gave you, we'll give the rest of it to the press, we'll blow the institute and the hunters and everything wide open, and we'll see what your precious code means then, because everyone knows werewolves aren't real. They'll see government testing or corporate or whatever they want, and you and yours will be in jail and your daughter, your precious little girl, will be at best arrested. Do you understand, you will not come near us, you will not even come in the same state as us."

 

He slides out of the booth, "are you coming, Derek?" he asks the Alpha, who gets out of his own chair at the command, Handlers, Chris thinks, trained to war, trained to control these creatures. He thinks about what he read in the files, how the Alpha was female, how the alpha was unbonded, how she was the niece of one of the bonded pairs, and the brother of the other. He sees how they were underestimated now, how they killed one of their own to escape.

 

"Why come to me?" Chris asks as Lydia pulls herself from the booth.

 

Lydia smiles, "because you didn't read all of the files," she tells him, "or you'd know."

 

He knows about the systematic abuse, how the wolves were forced to mount the children on pain of death, death that they had seen and experienced. He knows about the experiments and the reprisals. He knows about the kill switches and the cattle prods and the scars on her legs now. He knows so much about what they suffered and he wonders how he could have missed something when his mouth still tastes like vomit. He won't sleep for a while. They are children, younger than his little girl.

 

\---

 

It's four thirty AM on a Tuesday and Deputy Graham is done, she's worn out with over an hour and a half of her shift left. Beacon Hills is quiet, there are two drivers out on patrol, the Sheriff is on call, and she's manning the phones just in case. She has a game of solitaire going on the PC because it's quiet and the tick tick tick of the clock on the wall, with the occasional hiss of the coffee machine.

 

She's moving the red seven unto the black eight when the phone rings. It's not the emergency number, but the desk phone so for a second she's surprised before training kicks in and she answers the phone. "Beacon Hills Sheriff's Department, deputy Graham speaking, how can I help you?"

 

"I," the voice says on the other end of the line, "can I speak to," he stops again, "I'm looking for Deputy Stilinski." He says finally.

 

"Sheriff Stilinski isn't available right now," she's careful to correct the boy without offending him.

 

"He got Sheriff?" the boy asks, there is a lump in his throat, for a second she thinks he might be proud. "Tara? is this Tara?" She can hear him crying and it's then that she makes the realisation of who it is, of who is calling.

 

"Stiles?" she asks, "Stiles is that you? Oh God, Stiles," she is running through a hundred emotions, and she doesn't understand any of them, she's trying to stand, to get her cell from her pocket so she can call the Sheriff, she has to call him. They haven't heard a word in ten years and then he calls. The Sheriff had been so insistent when he was a deputy, teaching Stiles the department number. "Honey, I need you to hold the line. I'm going to call your dad, okay."

 

"I can't, not yet," he says, "I just," he sighs down the line, "I just needed to know he was okay."

 

"Stiles, we can come and get you, we've been looking for you for so long."

 

"It's not safe yet," he says, "but soon, I'm okay, I just, I need you to tell him, I'm okay, it's going to be okay, I'm coming home."

 

She's dialling even as he talks. "Stiles please," she manages, remembering the little boy with the flashing lights on his shoes that she took to the hospital that day - the day that he vanished, she remembers his smile and how he talked and talked and there hasn't been a day that she didn't hate herself for not staying just a little longer, for not stopping him being taken. She half hears him say "goddammit, Lyds," but by the time she has finished speaking the line is dead. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Due to public demand a second chapter.

  
_“The moon sets. The next day you wake up in sheets that smell of fabric conditioner. There is CNN. There is coffee. There is weather. There is your human face in the mirror. The world, you discover, is a place of appalling continuity.”_   
_\-- Glen Duncan, Talulla Rising_   


Harry doesn't taste the whiskey any more, he's drunk too much of it. The room is dark and the bottle catches the light that falls through the window from the streetlight outside. It's late. He should go to bed. He should, but he doesn't. The nightly ritual of in, remove his coat, put his gun in the safe, those he does as he has done for years, but then comes the new rituals, take the whiskey from the cupboard over the stove top. Take the glass from the counter. Walk into the sitting room and sit in the dark. Drink.

He had thought it awful when Stiles was gone. He had not comprehended how much worse it would be to have him back.

They don't show you that on the news or Lifetime Movies, they show the tearful reunion, they don't show what comes after.

They don't show your kid, the image of his mother, sitting there saying he understands if you want a blood test to prove who he is, because he doesn't expect you to just accept him. They don't show your kid holding the hand of a strange girl and with two men behind them as he tries to explain he can't be parted with them, physically. They don't show him waking in the night screaming and flinching away when you try to comfort him. They don't show him curled up in the wardrobe with a grown man to sleep because it's how he feels safe, or how the girl makes a nest under the desk in the spare room, but yet pretends like she's a queen the rest of the time.

They don't show you how he flinches in supermarkets and how he works out to the cent which is cheapest because he's used to living frugally. They don't show how he can't be trusted to pick up things he wants because he's so used to not being able to have them. They don't show you how she cries the first time she has a Reese's piece because she's never had chocolate before. They don't show you the scars, both those on their skin and the ones without. They don't show you how you can't talk to them because they simply don't understand, or the quizzical look when you show them that you've gotten what had been their favourite superhero on subscription because you knew they'd come home one day - and they don't know who Batman is.

They don't tell you that at the support group. Those are for the ones who haven't had the child come back, you're not expected to be there when they come back. They talk about accepting the possibility that they're dead. they talk about how you keep the room like a shrine. They don't talk about what happens after.

No one does.

The whiskey doesn't burn any more.

One of the wolves, that's the word that Stiles and Lydia throw around so carelessly about the two men who follow them like ducklings, the ones that Harry had thought were their captors until he realised that they were victims too, just of a different kind, is sat on the stairs facing him. "Does it help?" he asks. "The whiskey."

It's the older one, Peter, the one whose eyes flash blue. Stiles said he was the weaker one, that Derek is strong enough to tear down buildings - it's part of what they don't talk about, the thing that gives Stiles those sad eyes and tight mouth, the look he inherited from his mother when she didn't want to talk about something that hurt her. Stiles looks so much like Claudia it's like a slap in the face, except his hands, those are Harry's.

"No," Harry answers. He doesn't lie to them. Lydia said that the wolves can hear lies, but it doesn't matter, they've been through enough, the truth can't really hurt them much any more. They're too raw for anything else. "I don't think anyone's ever asked me that before."

Peter makes an acknowledging noise as if he's considering it. "Do you mind if I join you?" He asks finally.

"Grab a glass." Both of the wolves move silently. One of the few things that Stiles ever revealed about the Before was that they were trained as soldiers. Harry isn't sure that he wants to know any more.

He knows too much as it is.

They sit in silence, sipping the whiskey. He went to the liquor store and bought the one that he was told tasted the best. It doesn't matter, he hasn't tasted it in years. The label calls it something unpronounceable, Laphroaig, and it's a top shelf whiskey but it tastes of nothing.

After a while Peter breaks the silence. "You don't ask us about what happened." It's not a question, or even a realisation, just a statement thrown into the dark.

"No," Harry agrees, but in his mind's eye he sees Dr Fenris's face, he sees the trauma specialist that they had requested specifically coming out of the exam room halfway through on the verge of a panic attack. He sees that calm doctor go into the on call room and hears him howl like an animal because he doesn't want to show Lydia how broken he is by what they did, and how she replies it doesn't matter, she doesn't need the anaesthetic, she's done it before. And how Melissa McCall opened a box of tongue depressors and started snapping them one by one because she had to express her rage in a way that wouldn't further hurt the kids.

Weeks later and Harry can still hear the snap, snap, snap of the wood in her hands.

He drains the glass in a single swallow. Even a full mouthful instead of the graceful sip doesn't hurt any more.

"It's probably best." Peter says. "I still smell fire and it's been years." He swirls the whiskey in his glass. He hasn't drunk any of it.

Harry understands that. He just doesn't know what to say so he says nothing.

In his head Melissa's face is streaked with tears and in her hands there is the snap, snap, snap of the wood.

Lydia and Stiles talk in Russian sometimes, quietly, over their oatmeal. Neither of them like the sugary cereals, oatmeal with half a spoon of honey and cinnamon, then two eggs, fried over easy. That's what they have every morning. Lydia drinks coffee, Stiles prefers juice. Something in the way that he looks at it like he's scared someone is going to take it away. Peter and Derek just empty their glass or cup as fast as they can, in large loud swallows. They crowd over their food and eat it as fast as they can. It's prison behaviour, Harry knows, it's where someone has taken the food from them.

No man should see his adult son hold a banana for over an hour because he doesn't know how to eat it and is terrified someone will take it from him. No, Stiles isn't an adult, he's something else, something other, something broken and lost and fierce.

Harry doesn't know what to do, so he sits in the dark and drinks.

And when he lies in bed he hears the snap, snap of balsa.

And goddamn him he looks so much like his mother.

For ten years Stiles' room was empty. For three years his mother went in on a Tuesday to dust and hoover, sometimes she'd lift one of his shirts from the wardrobe and press it to her face as she cried, wailing into the silence of the house, then she was gone, buried with the little knitted bear that she had made for her son, because the counsellors said it would help, that it would be easier if Harry could admit that he was gone. But it wasn't easier. It was never easier. So he subscribed to Stiles' favourite comics and lost him all over every month when it arrived in his mail box.

They didn't tell you what came next, when the sound of his wife keening in their son's room was replaced by the slow clinical snap, snap, snap of tongue depressors in the hands of the most gentle woman you know.

They never told you what came after.

"How do you break someone who has nothing," he mutters under his breath for perhaps the hundredth time since Stiles came back, "you give them back something broken." Peter doesn't question what he means, he looks like he understands.

In the between after Claudia's death and before Stiles' return when the house was empty Harry arrested a man for driving his car into a tree, he was well above the limit and he was sentenced to a month in rehab. The year before the man, Mark, had lost his wife and daughter in a car accident, a wet road and poor visibility, an accident that was no one's fault. He had coped because he had his dog, and then he came into the sheriff's station to report that his Molly, his golden retriever, was missing, had maybe run off. Months later he got a call from a vet in Mount Shasta saying that they'd found his dog, she had been taken in a dog fighting ring, she'd been used to train the other dogs. When he got her back she had lost a leg, her tail, one eye and most of her teeth. Her ears were like little rags on her head and she was hideously scarred, and she was so excited to see him because she knew him and she trusted him.

That was the night he went out and got stupid drunk, and drove his car into a tree on a deserted road, and as he sat in the back of the ambulance he had told Harry that, how you do break someone who has nothing? You give them back something broken. Harry had taken Molly in for the month that Mark was in rehab, and as excited as she was to see him get home from his shift, how nice it was to have something in the house again, she flinched if he spoke too loud, or he went to pet her.

That's what Stiles was like, torn and scarred and flinching.

The first time he had seen his father in years he had just stood there, he couldn't even cry. Then Derek had put his hand on Stiles' shoulder and Stiles had said something, Harry didn't hear it over the blood pounding in his ears, his chest was tight and sore and all he could hear was the whump whump whump sound of his heart, and Stiles lip was trembling and there were tears in his eyes and Harry went to step forward to comfort him, even if it was just a hand on his shoulder and Derek "wolfed" out. Harry had his gun out in seconds, trained on the thing that was next to his boy.

And that was when Stiles had said Dad, he had tried to calm them both, to prevent violence, and he had stepped between, between the gun and the creature Derek had become - had become to protect his boy - and said it was alright, and then Lydia sighed and rolled her eyes and said "men, they make everything complicated."

And Harry dropped the gun, holstered it with years of practise, and gathered both STiles and Lydia into stiff hugs because they did not know how to react.

"Stiles never gave up on you." Peter says finally. "He knew you were searching, you just hadn't found him yet." It's said as a salve, something to comfort him.

"Would I have?"

Peter's smile is mocking, soft across handsome features. "No."

They are silent a little longer, sitting in the dark drinking top shelf Scotch with a government experiment whilst upstairs his son sleeps, probably crowded into the bottom of his wardrobe with a man who can turn into an animal, one that would have ripped Harry's throat out for scaring Stiles. Curled across his back, to hide the scars and brands, is a tattoo of a nine tailed fox, the twin to the one sprawled along Lydia's side, neither of the wolves seem to be marked at all. Stiles says it's because they heal quickly.

Dr Fenris didn't say if they did.

Harry is almost certain that Stiles and the other wolf, Derek, are sexually active with each other.

He doesn't know if he should stop it, or let them take comfort in it.

He can hear Melissa snapping the tongue depressors in his head.

He feels worn thin, like the pastry his own mother made for strudel that was worked so fine you could read through it, stretched and folded and shaped into something new, but unbaked, waiting. That is how he feels. Stretched and stuffed and waiting.

He doesn't know what to do.

He hefts himself out of the chair. "I'm going to bed," he says, hopeful that the belly full of scotch will help him sleep. It hasn't yet. He's hopeful that one of the others, Lydia or Stiles, or even Derek, won't wake in the night screaming tonight. He's sure that they will. He hopes that when he goes on shift tomorrow that Tara won't ask him about Stiles, about how he's settling in, is he going to school, has he seen the therapist? and all the other questions Harry doesn't know the answers for.

They didn't tell you this in counselling and group - they don't show it on the news or the Lifetime Movies. It's worse when they come home.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The flesh had infinity in it. I must know every inch by touch yet every inch renewed its mystery the instant my hand moved on. Delightful endless futility.”  
> Glen Duncan, The Last Werewolf

_“The flesh had infinity in it. I must know every inch by touch yet every inch renewed its mystery the instant my hand moved on. Delightful endless futility.”_  
 **Glen Duncan, The Last Werewolf**

 

Raf isn’t sure she’s what he expected, standing there in her floral dress with the buttons up the front. She has a pair of knee highs underneath it and simple ballet flats, with an oversized cardigan slouching over her shoulders. Her hair is tied back neatly in a braid but a few wisps of the red fall to frame her face prettily.

Normally the children who escape from cults are shy, terrified things, wearing layers of clothes, and cowering away, their bodies folded in on themselves, or there are quirks, they smoke, fidget and twist, not this girl, but he can see the scars on her arm, the tattoo on her wrist, the Greek letter Theta. According to the file this is the least of her ink. She’s also, according to the file, seventeen years old.

She’s the same age as his son, but where Scott has an open expression, soft eyes and cowlicks, this girl is made of granite, there is not an inch of give in her, despite the softness of her small frame. She barely reaches his shoulder stood beside him.

He adjusts the camera, with his back to her. “When you’re ready,” he says, finding it hard to speak past the lump in his throat at the sight of her, this child who has survived horrors he cannot imagine. He’s not one of the agents who deal with cult kids, he’s just the one whose wife was there for their medical when they came home.

When he turns back she’s naked but for the thigh highs, her dress sloughed off like a skin and her hand cupped loosely around the dogtags she wears around her neck. For a moment he looks at her, tiny and curved like a goddess, with the huge white wolf tattoo on her abdomen curling it’s nose down into the line of her mons with it’s dark red curls. He sees the soft white breasts, smaller than he had thought, with pale pink nipples the same colour as her lips. He sees the scars on her belly like stretch marks that run horizontally, and the corresponding marks on her heavy thighs. He sees the puckers and pocks on her hips.

“What are you doing?” he asks, grabbing his jacket and wrapping it around her.

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” she asks, and her voice, a soft rasp much older than her years, “it’s okay,” she reassures him with her hand on his arm, “I’ve done this before. I know what to do.” There is no hesitation in her eyes, her mouth slightly parted and glossed with saliva. “If I’m not pleasing I can get Stiles.” She says it so artlessly that his mouth waters, he wonders in a dark, lizard part of his brain what she knows, what she’s capable of, how she’s been trained, then he wraps his coat tighter about her shoulders.

“You’ll never have to do this again.” He tells her as he crouches to lift her dress where it makes a puddle around her ankles.

She laughs at him, and there is nothing of the naif she plays in that noise, nothing at all.

She pulls her dress back on, giving him another flash of her breasts and the pale pink nipples, large and soft against the pillow of her breasts, the ginger flash of her cunt, and he, for a second, lets the lizard brain dream, of the girl as she should have been, with those beautiful round hips and heavy thighs, her soft breasts pushed up against the rough skin of his hands, then he chokes it down as the back of his throat tastes like bile.

When she walks out of the room, round hips swaying over a perfect apple ass that the soft floaty dress clings to inappropriately, highlighting his knowledge that she is wearing no panties, he sees the smile that her guard dog gives him, knowing and dark and with smugness in those blue eyes.

He regrets, for the first time in a long time, getting sober, the chip in his pocket, the one he had been so proud of, the five years clean chip, suddenly feels like a millstone dragging him down.

Alcohol won’t take the smell of her, jasmine and salt and something else he doesn’t know, from his nostrils, or the knowledge of her skin, pitted and scarred and the god wolf inked on her skin.

He pulls out his cell, thumbs through the contacts until he finds Melissa and dials, knowing she will have it off whilst she’s at work, but so he can slump against the wall and listen to her voice as she tells him she’s unavailable right now but if he’d like to leave a message.

He thought he wouldn’t be strong enough for this. He’s not. He was wrong. It’s not because she’s a child, battered and bruised and shrinking from him. He thought he would be kind and patient. He was so wrong. Whatever the child has become, whatever it is she is now, she’s not broken.

Morell is waiting for him in his office, she is beautiful in her calm, as if nothing short of apocalypse could try the wide peace of her serenity, but there is something smug about her peacefulness, "that took a little longer than I thought it would," she says. She has gotten two cup of station house coffee, burned and thin, and placed one on his desk.

"She tried to get me to fuck her." Raf almost collapses into his chair. He wonders how Sheriff Stilinski does it, with the four of them living in his house, with Lydia and her cold sexuality and pale soft breasts, with the white god wolf that curls down to the curve of her pubis. It's been minutes but in that time he has washed her skin clean of it's imperfections, of it's scars and pock marks and the puckered remains of surgery. "When I said no, she offered me Stiles."

There is the hint of a smile on the corner of Morell's mouth. "She offered me Peter." She says, and Raf looks into the dark black swirl of his coffee, the three bubbles that float on the top, the oily slick of it. She continues talking but he's stopped listening, her voice is calm, almost stentorian in it's perfect cadences. Marin Morell is not the sort of woman a man fantasises about, even in quiet moments, she's like a statue made flesh, beautiful, and perfect and cold. "You have a son, right?" she asks although she knows. Morell never asks questions she does not know the answer to.

"Sometimes," she says, "when we take clay we can shape it into anything, even a knife. Does the form that the clay takes remove from it the fact that it was shaped?" It's a question of ethics. Raf was never good at those. "Sometimes we forget that the blade that doesn't shatter is still a weapon, no matter it's creation. Sometimes the victim is the most dangerous of all." She works at Eichen House, she deals with all manner of crazies from the broken teens to the hardened psychopaths. "Sometimes you need to stop seeing a figure made out of clay, Agent McCall, and see the knife."

There is the hint of a smile on her painted lips, a flicker of amusement in her black eyes. Even the way she moves is one of stillness, of poise, of stone.

In the waiting room he sees the older man, the one with the blue eyes and slicked back hair, fussing with Lydia's buttons, as if forcing them to stay shut after what she did in the interview room. Lydia looks nonplussed with the fussing, like it's sometihng she's used to, but it's not parental, for all it should be, for the twenty years or so the man has on her, it's not sexual either, it's something else, something symbiotic. Raf catches on the word, one he had never thought to use outside high school. Symbiotic, something where each is dependant on the other, a mutualism of vision. He sees the way she curls into his body heat without touching, without the appearance of anything untowards as the deputies go about their business in the sheriff's station, the way he holds his hands, the finger tips brushing her skin, the reassurance in his gaze and the soft part of her lips. He can't hear what they're saying, but he can see them through the horizontal blinds on his office window.

He wonders again how the Sheriff copes.

He wonders why they're not in Eichen House with the other dangerous crazies. He's pretty sure they should be.

Unprepared to go back to Lydia, he goes to the other office, where the sheriff has put Stiles.

Raf remembers Stiles, or how he was before. He remembers the skinny kid with the non stop mouth and hands that were into everything, who reacted to the first scolding with a grin and the knowledge that he was cute enough to get away with it. It's hard to reconcile the child with the boy in the office. He's wearing an oversized leather jacket like a shield, and raspberry coloured jeans, his chucks look like they've seen better years, the blue colour washed out to a sort of stone colour, and the logo on his tee is cracked. He knows this is as deliberate as Lydia's floaty dress because the sheriff would have bought them new clothes. It's only been a short time though. The jeans look new. He catalogues these things the way he's been trained. He sees the silver pin of a wolf on it's hind legs on the shirt he's wearing under the jacket, the one that's almost covered, an old flannel worn almost sheer.

Raf takes the seat opposite him, placing the camera on the desk, the red light a reassuring mark in the room. Stiles is chewing on his lip, then his tongue flicks out to wet the skin, still swollen and abused from his teeth. His eyes are large and seem almost golden in the electric light. He's beautiful, still a little rounded from puppy fat, hair swept back from a clear forehead, but it's in a different way to Lydia.

"We're not going to talk about the Institute today, Stiles," Raf starts. "I want to talk about what happened at the supermarket."

Stiles eyes narrow. "I," he starts, then changes what he was going to say, Raf sees it in the way he moves, the flicker of his tongue over his lips. "Derek and I we were doing the grocery shopping," he stops again, "we split up, it's quicker if we each start at one end and meet in the middle." Raf nods acknowledgment. "I was picking cereal but I got tangled," he stops, the pad of his thumb running over his palm, just a little tightly, "I couldn't remember if Dad was allergic to nuts or not, and although I had to get muesli there were too many kinds, I didn't know if he wanted it with fruit or seeds or bran flakes or wheat flakes and I got tangled."

Raf supposes the word is as good as any. It certainly describes the feeling well enough. "I get tangled sometimes." He runs his hands, he has a man's hands Raf notices, up his arms. "The kid's been harrassing Lydia for weeks, asking her out, he comes to the house with flowers and gifts. He won't take no for an answer. Derek and Peter offered to have a word with him, but she just keeps telling him no. He won't go away. And I was tangled, the woman at the store, she said," he stops again, "she says he was trying to get my attention, but I was tangled, I didn't hear him. Then he grabbed me."

"So you broke his arm?"

"Yes." Stiles answers. "I," he stops. "I'm not going to say I didn't mean to, but I was tangled, I,"

"The boy's father is the district attorney, do you know what that means?" Stiles shrugs it off. "He says you're dangerous, that you deserve to be in Eichen House, do you know what Eichen House is?" Raf knows he's talking to the boy like an idiot, but it suits his purpose to do so for now. "You'd be on your own there."

At that the boy reacts, his hands, a man's hands, fly to the nape of his neck, "no," he says, "you can't do that, you can't, you can't." And just like that his breathing goes out of kilter and the dark haired man that shadows him, the one he calls Derek, opens the door and comes in, he puts his hands around Stiles' arms and presses his forehead against Stiles, guiding him into breathing with him.

He glares at Raf as he guides the boy out of the room, arm around his shoulder. Lydia and her shadow standing in the corridor with glares that should kill. Whittemore couldn't get the charges to stick, his boy had been seen harrassing the two of them since they came home, inappropriate touches and harangues from the sort of invulnerable immortality kids his age should have, the knowledge that Lydia is beautiful and he is king of the school so she should be his, a broken wrist is the least of it. He thinks about Scott, his Scott, with his puppy dog eyes and uneven jaw, the one who turned around one day and changed from a child into a man when Raf wasn't looking. He thinks how Scott still throws a teenage tantrum when it's fish for supper and not chicken nuggets, how he exclaims "you don't understand" as if he's the only person to have ever gone through puberty. He imagines what it would be like to be the sheriff, to have these two frightened wild animals in his home, and their shadows. The way Stiles can't sit still and every tell is magnified, and he appears at best, one wrong word away from a panic attack, the way Lydia thinks men only want her for sex and is prepared to get it out of the way.

He realises he doesn't know very much at all, and the chip in his pocket that feels like a millstone, it's not going to get lighter any time soon.


	4. Extra chapter - things I wrote for this verse but didn't make the final cut

**Personal Journal of Dr C Gell, date REDACTED**

Extraction Team B returned today with the wrong child. I understand how the mistake could have happened, having heard their testimonies, but they were told to retrieve a boy and returned with a girl. It seems that REDACTED was correct about their ability to fulfil the simplest of instructions. As usual they went well above what was required of them. I cannot see them lasting long in the Institute, as they have failed three times in the most basic extraction protocols.

Someone once said that the difference between reality and fiction was that fiction had to make sense. This is the only justification I have ever found for Extraction Team B.

This is the excuse that they gave us. The family of subject 00748 was given the surprise holiday tickets as a prize for a competition that they did not compete in, and therefore could not remember entering, but were willing to take the chance to take junior away. This was the plan as it gave us time to be in place to take the subject. The hotel was prepared, everything was in place to simply snatch the boy as was done previously; if necessary the parents could be drugged to make this easier, with the stipulation that lethal force was to be used as a very last result, as if one child was compatible it is most likely a second from the same parents would be compatible also.

However it seemed that the subject in question was ill and so the day trip that was part of their "prize package" would otherwise be wasted and so they passed it on to another couple in the hotel with a child of a similar age, from now on I shall call this child Subject Theta. Extraction team B waylaid the hired car as previously planned with the intent of taking Subject Theta from the parents when an opportunity presented itself.

Extraction Team B, however, were completely incapable of this simple task. Unable to take the child with stealth they decided that a full frontal assault on the parents was the best possible course, never mind that this was the wrong child which anyone with a single brain cell could tell due to the pink dress suggesting that the child might be a girl when they were told to extract a boy, perhaps the "disney princess" shoes she was wearing distracted them.

They rammed the car, took the subject and shot both parents in the head. One of them then had the wherewithal, although I am thinking that it must have been a group effort to come up with a single intelligent thought, to remove all traces of the child from the car. 

The Extraction has been all over the news for although they removed all traces of the child from the car they did not think to empty the hotel room and the team leader had the balls to look bashful when he returned to the institute with the subject tranquilised and very clearly the wrong child.

Their report has, of course, been passed to higher bodies than I. I would not be surprised to see all six of them entered into experiments. Although they are far too old for the bonding process there is much to be learned in how the Specimens take down their prey, and if any human consuming properties are available.

Dr REDACTED has suggested a moonlight hunt for some of the weaker specimens. It would easily kill two birds with one stone, removing the incompetence of Extraction Team B and giving us valuable data on troop movements and kill patterns. My regret with this is that it does remove several interesting specimens as they will have to be terminated after such behaviour. There is enough human intelligence in them that it is unthinkable that they be allowed the taste of human flesh, after all they may turn upon the Institute or their handlers.

It is Institute policy that no specimen with a handler, or even potential handler, will be interred in the hunt.

Subject Theta has provided some very anomalous results to our battery of tests.

End journal entry

\---

 

**Subject Theta personal details at time of acquisition Date REDACTED  
completed by Dr J Pryce **

**Age :** 71 complete lunar cycles (5 years 6 months)  
 **Sex** : female  
 **Blood type** : O+  
 **Height** : 99.1 cm  
 **weight** : 37.2lbs  
 **Distinguishing features** : small strawberry birthmark on inside of left thigh, freckles on shoulders.  
Caucausion, red hair, hazel brown eyes, missing two milk teeth at time of acquisition, front left side of mouth

No results to allergen test.   
No results to heavy metal tests.   
Does not test positive for "Handler" gene.   
Unusually high leukocyte response -possible previous illness, added battery of broad spectrum anti-biotics as a precautionary measure.  
Above average results on intelligence and reaction tests.

It is the decision of the committee to submit the subject to the "Handler" experiment. She is to be tested against Specimens 19, 25 and 47.

 **Other Notes:**  
Answers to the name Lydia, if the "handler" experiment is successful this will be her designation with her specimen. The requisition form for items specifically for her has been completed but not surrendered at this time. She remained silent throughout the entire testing procedure, refused all toys and books and tests all the food that she is given. Recordings of her in containment show her singing to herself more out of amusement than as self soothing.  
Dr Skorupa suggests that if she passes the "Handler" experiment that she might benefit from being paired with Subject Epsilon as opposed to some of the older "Handlers".  
It is worth noting at this time that Dr Skorupa seems to be forming emotional attachments with the Subjects. This is probably due to her primary doctorate being in animal psychology.

\---

 **Transcript of Handler Experiment - Subject Epsilon**  
Present at time of recording : Dr J Pryce, Dr A Skorupa, Dr C Gell

JP : Recording, lunar rise at 4.55 PM, Subject Epsilon has been placed in the holding cage against Specimen 11, Specimen 11 is male, 147 lunar cycles.  
AS : Specimen 11 is the youngest of all the specimens. Dr Day theorises that the Handler bond may be easier to initiate if both subject and specimen are beneath the age of puberty. Dr Day does not seem to realise that we only have one specimen beneath the pubertal threshold.  
JP : This is the third subject that specimen 11 has been introduced to.  
CG : Moon rise in five minutes.  
JP : Specimen 11 has been released into the holding area. Subject Epsilon appears intrigued rather than scared.  
recording from Holding area, some distortion on the line  
 _Subject Epsilon : Hey, are you okay? Do you know how we got here._  
AS : Subject is attempting to communicate with the specimen. Specimen 11 has tested highly on interpersonal spectrums, however it is unlikely that this will work as he does not have complete control over his transformation.  
JP : Moon rise in four minutes  
 _Subject Epsilon : My dad will be looking for me, I'll make sure he finds us all, you don't have to be scared, he's coming, he's a deputy, we can't be that far from Beacon Hills, I was with my mom, she's sick, me being missing won't help her so my dad will come and get me, and he can take you too. ..._  
JP : Moon rise in three minutes  
 _Subject Epsilon : I'm Stiles, what's your name?  
Specimen 11 : Derek, ... my name's Derek.  
Subject Epsilon : Pleased to meet you, Derek. _  
JP : Moon rise in two minutes  
Specimen 11 : You need to get out of here, you need to go.   
Sound of door rattling  
Subject Epsilon : I can't, it's locked, it's going to be okay, Derek, my dad will come, he'll get us out of here.  
JP: Moon rise in 60 seconds.  
CG : Transformation has started. The damn weather service can't be trusted to get anything right.  
Sounds of snarling, tearing and metal creaking.  
Subject Epsilon : Oh my god, that is so COOL.  
AS : Laughter  
CG : That's new.  
JP: Subject Epsilon has reacted favourably to the transformation of Specimen 11, he has actually moved closer to the dividing cage wall. Tranquilisers have been prepared to stop Specimen 11 if he appears to charge the cage wall.  
sound of sobbing is heard on the recording  
Subject Epsilon : It's okay, you're not alone, it's okay. I'm here.  
Sobbing intensifies, sound of snarling is also noticed.  
Subject Epsilon: when I'm sick my mommy sings to me, do you want me to sing for you, Derek? just until my daddy comes.  
Subject Epsilon (singing) : You showed me the meadow, And Mirkwood and Silkwood, And you would if I would so you never would, but I chased down your posies, Your pansies in my horsies, Then opened my hands and they were empty then  
AS : I think the rest of the evening is just a formality at this point, don't you, gentlemen?  
CG: I agree. The Experiment has been a success. Want to make it official, Jonah?  
JP : Subject Epsilon has bonded with Specimen 11. He has been accepted into the program as Specimen 11's Handler. He is to be moved into shared accommodation with the specimen although due to his age Specimen 11 will still be removed at the peak of the lunar cycle into experiment cages.   
Hissing and Subject Epsilon's voice slurs and eventually quiets.  
AS : Tranquiliser gas released into experiment area, both subject Epsilon and Specimen 11 have been restrained.  
CG : Time is 5.11 pm.  
 **End transcript**

 

**Personal journal of M Berton, RN Date REDACTED**

You ever get into a job you can't get out of? I did, and the funny thing is I both love and hate it in equal measure. I hate that we have to keep these personal journals and that they're stored on the main server, but I understand why. I even understand why we have psychologists reading them to monitor our mental health because this is the kind of job that drives you crazy. I hate that I understand it, and sometimes I hate myself, but there are such rewards for this job.

You understand that don't you, Diane? They brought me two new handlers today, kids both of them. There is a month between them, a girl and a boy, tagged and chipped and tattooed like merchandise. They passed the bonding process, apparently the boy holds the record now at fifteen minutes before tranquilisation. I asked what happened to the kids who don't pass, and they said that they rough them up when they're out and drug them before leaving them dishevelled in the woods near where they'd been found, like they'd escaped a normal predator. The Institute, they told me, must remain secret if it is to do it's job. Of course this was years ago, Diane, when they worked with older teens. The two they brought me today were five.

There are nine handlers now.

There are always more wolves than handlers.

Diane, it's, well it's a shit show. The oldest of them is twenty nine, there's something about him, he's just pain creepy and then they range down to fifteen. The newest two are five. Can you imagine what that's like.

I argued with Gell, again, I said it wasn't worth putting the kids in the dorm, that they were just asking for trouble if they did. They're just babies, and I don't even want to know what they went through to bring them here, whatever genetic marker showed up on the blind testing, but they're babies. I offered to put them up in my suite, and it seems that that will have to do for now. Skorupa wants to put them in with the wolves that they are to handle, but Derek doesn't have full control yet, he should still be with his mother, but Talia is unbonded and so they can't risk it.

Skorupa wants to breed Talia again, they have better successes apparently with born wolves as opposed to bitten but the last three children were human. I wonder if Skorupa has a heart, for all that she appears to be a woman she's got the maternal instinct of a hungry hyena. Nothing exists for her outside of her research.

I love my job, I really do, I just hate what it means. Today I spent trying to work out how well these two babies could read, finding things that they could play with, and watching them bond. I'm the one who has to clean the injection sites and the tattoo marks and make sure that they're eating, all nine of them.

Dr Ellison is on call only when the wolves are too rough and someone gets scarred.

**Addendum**

Diane, Stiles will be in my room tonight, Lydia's being put with Peter. The word is from on high, from Dr REDACTED himself. I don't know what they want from their handlers, I really don't, but I can't see the good of putting a five year old with a twenty three year old man. At least Peter isn't one of the creepy ones.  
 **End journal entry**

\----

A Girl Needs a Gun these Days 

 

When Lydia left the shower she had pulled on a pair of Peter's jeans and her flesh coloured bra, rubbing her hair dry with the towel in her hand. She had left her feet bare on the brown motel carpet, and he could see the tail of her goddess wolf on her hip under the over sized jeans, and the hint of her black panties. There was a bruise peeking out from beneath the underwire of her bra and he didn't know how she had gotten it. That worried him.

She looked tired, worn out, her armour peeled away with the clothes she had left in the bathroom of their cheap motel room. For a second he wondered if she would cry, it would not be the first time, but instead she raised her eyes and smiled at him. Lydia was not one to lie to him, they had been through too much for that, so the smile she offered him, small as it was, was genuine. He had never seen anything as lovely in his life as when she smiled for him.

"The water pressure sucks," she said sitting on the edge of the bed furthest from the door. She always took the position furthest from the door as she could, "but it's hot." Her duffel was sat on the bed, he always made a point of putting her things where she could reach them easily, she rooted around in it for a few moments before pulling out a brush. She had found it in the ruins of the old town that covered the institute, but even with those associations she hadn't gotten rid of it, even when she had discarded everything else she could.

She couldn't just discard Peter, the Institute had made sure of that.

The institute had made sure of many things.

Lydia held out the brush, "will you?" she said and he nodded. Laura had used to do this for her, but before then he had. He'd done it when she was a child, it made little difference to him now that she was a woman. He had used to hum to her whilst he braided her hair, she was capable of doing it herself, she had since they left the Institute, so it was clear she was feeling more fragile than usual. Perhaps this was simply her without her armour.

The border was close, tomorrow they would be in Canada, on their way to meet Stiles and Derek in Calgary and then onwards to Alberta, and from there to Mandalay where they would be safe. He knew the mantra as well as he knew the smell of her and the sound of her breath and the thuthump of her heart, because she had made sure that he knew. 

North of Athabasca. East of Peace River. North of Dwyer. To Mandalay where they would be safe ; where Lydia wouldn't need to wear her armour, and where she could sleep peacefully without his hand in hers.

He sat down beside her on the edge of the queen bed, and she twisted away so that he could brush her hair. He always used long straight strokes, rather than holding it halfway and attacking it like Lydia did. He remembered his own mother doing that for his sister, sitting her down between her knees singing under her breath as she pulled the brush through her long black hair. He'd done the same for Lydia as a child in the institute, singing nonsense songs he made up or half remembered. Music wasn't something that they nurtured in the Institute, but they had had their songs when she was little, created between them like a private joke.

He was careful of the tangles, and then slowly, carefully, though never as well as Laura, he started to seperate the strands. Lydia always braided her hair when it was wet, she'd sleep like that and then in the morning she'd unbraid it and let the air dry the rest. They hadn't bothered with fripperies like hair dryers or tongs in the institute, Lydia was lucky to get elastics to tie it back, because it didn't occurr to them that if they let her hair grow the way that it did that she might want to tie it back.

\----

**Author's Note:**

> This story deals with the aftermath of Lydia and Stiles (and to an extent Derek and Peter) escaping from a facility that tested on them and werewolves. The characters explicitly discuss past abuse, which was psychological, physical and sexual of children as young as five. It suggests that Lydia's parents were murdered for the "program" and that Gerard and Kate brought wolves there to be tortured, and may even have helped.  
> It is heavily implied that both Stiles and Lydia are sexually involved with "their" wolves.  
> This is Lydia and Stiles facing Chris over this.
> 
> This story was going to be a big bang, but I couldn't write it exploring the institute, as dark as I can go I couldn't go that dark, but there are fragments of the files that Lydia gave Chris. It was going to feature how they escaped the institute and the search for Midian, not knowing it was a fabrication, and how they ultimately ended up in Beacon Hills with Stiles' dad, and how Stiles didn't know if his mother was alive or not.  
> I'm a coward and I'm not sure I could write any more without ripping myself to pieces over it.
> 
> Title from "Perfect blue buildings" by the Counting Crows


End file.
